U.S. Secretary of
Education Betsy DeVos recently announced that, as of July 1, 2017,
Year-Round Pell grants are now available to students. This change to the policy
ensures that hundreds of thousands of college students will now have the needed
resources to complete their course work in a time frame compatible with their
individual needs.

According to the announcement, this
new change in the Federal Pell Grant Program allows “an eligible student to
receive up to 150 percent of the student's Federal Pell Grant Scheduled Award
beginning with the 2017–2018 award year.”

Interested parties
are encouraged to see the Dear Colleague letter on the implementation of
Year-Round Pell Grants for more information.

The Supporting Student Success: Adult
Education and Remedial Education Reform in Community Colleges initiative, which ran from July 2015 through June
2017, was a technical assistance activity that supported state and local
efforts to reform remedial education services across the nation. The initiative
explored successful strategies in promoting student success in adult education
and developmental education programming, highlighted promising approaches to
program design, and provided examples of community colleges implementing these
designs in their programs. The program model approaches contextualization,
acceleration, student support, and hybrid models as promising practices for
increasing the college transition and completion rates of lower-skilled
learners at community colleges.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has recently announced that it is currently accepting nominations for its
2018 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. This award was established
to recognize
libraries and museums that have made outstanding contributions “to improve the
wellbeing of their communities.” IMLS notes that all nominations for an
institution by an employee, a board member, a member of the public from the
institution’s community, and an elected official are welcome. Each nominated
institution must complete and return a nomination form, by October 2, 2017, to be considered.

For this year’s
award, as indicated in the announcement, IMLS is
especially interested in museums and libraries with programs “that build
community cohesion and serve as catalysts for positive community change,
including programs that provide services for veterans and military families,
at-risk children and families, the un- and under-employed, and youth
confronting barriers to STEM-related employment.”

Prospective
candidates should be aware that all types of nonprofit libraries and library
organizations, associations, and consortia are eligible for nomination,
including the following: “academic, school, digital, tribal, and special
libraries or archives. Public or private nonprofit museums of any discipline
are eligible, including general, art, history, science and technology,
children’s, and natural history and anthropology, historic houses and sites,
arboretums, nature centers, aquariums, zoos, botanical gardens, and
planetariums.”

The Brookings Institution’s Brown Center
on Education Policyhas recently released
a new toolkit, Connecting Community
Colleges with Employers: A Toolkit for Building Successful Partnerships. Concerns
over the nation’s skills gap are longstanding and well document, but according
to this toolkit, “community colleges have the potential to provide low-cost,
high-quality education and training to students.” It further asserts that “[r]obust
relationships between colleges and local industry partners are critical to
building strong workforce development programs for students.” As such, the
toolkit provides useful information on how community college leaders “can take
a deliberate approach to communication with potential partners in their
community, including local businesses and industry leaders.”

All interested parties are encouraged to access the toolkit to learn more about the three key topics
it covers: Creating a Navigator for Industry Partners, Key Characteristics of
Productive Partnerships, and Practical Steps for Building Relationships between
Colleges and Industries.

The National Skills Coalition recently announced Indiana’s new Senate Bill 198 in its Skills Blog. According to the article, the newly signed bill
will provide “free community college to students seeking a certificate in a ‘high
value field,’” regardless of financial need. This new legislation, called the “Workforce
Ready Grant,” is the outcome of a partnership between Indiana’s governor, the
Indiana Commission for Higher Education, and the Indiana Department of
Workforce Development. It was supported by the Indiana Skills2Compete Coalition. The Skills Blog says that the state will provide
$2 million a year for the grant program.

Indiana defines “high value
fields” as those that have “high job placement, high completion rate, high wage
and high demand.” This new grant builds on the state’s "You Can. Go Back." campaign, which was designed to encourage more adults to return to
college, and complete degrees and credentials. The article highlights that
“earning a certificate in an in-demand industry not only helps businesses to
fill crucial human capital needs, but also allows adults in low-skilled,
low-wage jobs to enter into career pathways leading to family-sustaining
wages.”

Both the Indiana Skills2Compete
Coalition and National Skills Coalition are strong proponents of policies that
help to expand equitable access to middle-skill credentials and careers.
Middle-skill jobs, which require education beyond high school but not a
four-year degree, make up the largest part of America’s and Indiana’s labor
markets. Many key industries in Indiana are currently unable to find enough sufficiently
trained workers to fill these jobs. Thus, as the piece states, “[e]stablishing
last- dollar scholarships for certificates in in-demand fields, as Indiana’s
Workforce Ready Grant does, is one way that states can help adults with limited
skills earn a postsecondary credential that leads to a quality middle-skill job
while also ensuring that businesses have access to workers with the skills they
require.”

The five colleges of the Northeast
Minnesota Higher Education District (NHED) have coined a new mantra:
“education-based economic development.” NHED has developed a portfolio of
programs and initiatives that support industry in guiding the effort to remake
the college experience as proactive instead of reactive with regard to local
industry needs and to create a highly skilled workforce. In this webinar, three
regional educational leaders will discuss what it means to “lean forward” in such
areas as engineering education, customized training and continuing education, and
technical education in the high schools. The leaders will also explore the role a unique
regional economic development agency plays in their regions, and the colleges’
roles in shaping a skilled workforce that is ahead of the state and national
averages in two-year degree attainment. The speakers will also share challenges
that were overcome along the way and lessons learned.

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